


Whatever Lies Ahead

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [323]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: AU Post-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Dark, First Time, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not So Nice Feelings About the Jedi Council I Have, Sith!Qui-Gon Jinn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-18 22:54:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22134505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Obi-Wan gets a message. The Council tells him not to respond. He responds anyway.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: Mental Mimosa [323]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1012767
Comments: 12
Kudos: 252
Collections: Star Wars





	Whatever Lies Ahead

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Sacrifice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12948252) by [ilcuoreardendo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilcuoreardendo/pseuds/ilcuoreardendo). 



“Sit,” the dark lord said.

Obi-Wan crossed his arms. “I’d rather not.”

A low chuckle. “I see the years haven’t tempered your stubbornness.”

He tipped his chin up and made himself keep the creature’s gaze. “But they have seen you forsake all that you once held dear.”

“Much of it, yes. But not all.”

The dark lord stood, the shadows pooling at his feet, and all at once Obi-Wan began to understand that he was well and truly trapped.

“Onboard this vessel,” the Sith said in a voice like cool silk, “there are but three living beings: you, myself, and my apprentice. Certainly, there are dozens of droids about, but I can assure you that they’ll take no interest in your fate.” He smiled and oh, did that once-familiar expression cut Obi-Wan’s heart to the quick. “Since you’re no doubt turning your mind about the ways in which you might escape, I thought it only fair to give you a full picture.”

“Very kind.”

“No, not at all. I’m just loathe to see you struggle. I had quite enough of that in your padawan days.”

Obi-Wan felt a flare of anger. “You’ve no right to speak of that.”

The dark lord stepped towards him, those gold eyes glinting. “Why not? They’re part of my memories, too.”

“No,” Obi-Wan said. “That wasn’t you.”

“Yes, it was.” A gloved hand on his cheek; he found he couldn’t move away. “And that’s what pains you most, isn’t it? You can’t look back now on those long golden days without seeing them tainted by what came after.” The lord’s thumb brushed his mouth. “By what I’ve become.”

They’d ordered him not to come, had the Council. They’d told him to ignore the private message beamed in from the Outer Rim: _I’ve missed you_ , it had said. _A way has been made for you. Come find me._

He’d known it was from Qui-Gon, he’d _known_ , no matter how much damnable time had passed, no matter how unlikely it was. The Council had expressed doubt, loudly and repeatedly, until he was angrier at himself than he had been at them.

“I shouldn’t have troubled the Council with this,” he’d told them, keeping a tight rein on his anger--easier to do when he was comming in; if he’d been there, Gods knew what they’d have been able to read behind his face. “No doubt, masters, as you say, my own mind is playing tricks on me. I will heed your counsel and forget about this incident and head for Cassius V, per your request.”

Perhaps, he thought now, staring down the Sith who wore his master’s face, the Council hadn’t disbelieved him at all. Perhaps they’d known exactly what he would find and wished to protect him from it.

But he was here and the Sith was touching him and something in him, that great dam of feeling he’d worked so hard to bind was beginning against his will to give way.

“Is that why I’m here?” Obi-Wan said. “For you to taunt me?”

The dark lord’s eyes followed his thumb. “No.”

“For you to hurt me, or kill me?” He tried to laugh, but he found could summon no bravado. Not with the Sith this close. “If so, let’s to that then. I don’t care for being toyed with.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” Qui-Gon’s voice, now, wholly; lost were the striations of the Sith. “I could never hurt you, Obi-Wan. Surely I’ve not been gone so long that you’ve forgotten that.”

“Don’t speak to me like that.”

The Sith’s other hand found his hip. “Why? Because you crave it? Almost as much as you once craved my touch?”

Obi-Wan’s stomach turned over. Oh, gods, no. Not this. “Stop.”

“Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think you could shield that part of yourself from me when every cell in your body screamed it?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, the room suddenly spinning. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s not--I wasn’t...if this is some sort of Sith trick--”

Then there was heat against his throat, a breath, the scratch of whiskers, a lick. “Don’t lie to me. That is the one thing I can’t forgive. If you lie, then the very thing that is keeping you alive will be shattered and in your death, dear one, I will find no sting. Lie to me and I’ll strike you down where you stand.”

He heard his breath shudder. “You can try.”

The Sith chuckled again and this time, he could feel it, the way the sound made his captor’s lips vibrate. “My brave boy,” the lord murmured. “Never more so than when you are cornered, eh? It was always so; I’m glad it still is. I’m pleased to see how much you haven’t changed.”

“You keep saying that,” Obi-Wan gritted.

“Do I? Well.” A warm mouth on his jaw, on his cheek. “I supposed it’s selfish of me, really. I loved you as you were then. That you are so much the same will make it easier to love you now.”

“You loved--?!”

But no sooner had Obi-Wan spoken his shock than he could not speak at all, for his old master, the Sith, was kissing him. 

It was a kiss he had seen in his mind a thousand times--daydreams, nighttime meditations, in fleeting moments in battle between one hit and the next; one he’d ached for, one whose absence he’d build his whole life around, and now, his master was alive and his master was a Sith and it had been more than a decade since they’d touched and it was like being 19 again. In Qui-Gon’s arms, the failures of the day fell away--a mission failed, his freedom lost--and all Obi-Wan knew was that for those few shattered moments, he was no longer defined by what he had lost.

For Qui-Gon was wrong; he hadn’t been the same man once his master had left, once he’d fled from Naboo with his new protege into the arms of the Sith.

“Such darkness there has always been in Qui-Gon,” Yoda had told him blithely. “The Council had hoped, young Kenobi, that training you would help turn him towards the light.”

“Me?” He remembered the shattered feeling, the inexorable certainty all at once that above all, it was he who had failed. “I didn’t know that was my responsibility, Master.”

Yoda had looked bemused. “Of course you did not. Such knowledge your light would have tainted. It was hoped that you alone would be enough, eh? Only you.”

He was a Knight, then, one of the youngest ever, and an utter failure, all in the same breath. No he hadn’t been the same after that. He’d been a better Jedi, perhaps, in the ways that seemed to count: he stopped wars, he held peace, and among those who knew of such things, his name had become revered.

But inside, when he closed his eyes and fell into the deepest pools of the Force, he was a man defeated by his own ignorance before ever losing his braid.

 _I sent him away_ , he would tell himself in his dreams, a mantra that laced together his days. _If I hadn’t wanted him, if I had revered him, if I had not tainted the light with my misplaced love, then he wouldn’t have left. I’d have been enough, and my master would have been saved._

He had never had reason to doubt that until now. Even when the great, sleek ship had appeared out of nowhere and caught his starfighter in its tractor beam, he had been confident that this failure was his own. Even when his master’s new apprentice, no longer a boy, had torn him bodily from the cockpit and snatched away his saber and dragged him to his master’s chambers to wait. 

Even when he had first seen the dark lord sitting before him, booted legs crossed, smiling, and let himself understand that yes, this was Qui-Gon--still, he’d been certain the disaster that had brought them all here was his.

If only he’d been stronger. If only he hadn’t been so foolish. If only he’d looked at his master when his gaze had grown bolder and seen a Jedi and not a man.

All these things were in his mind, had been for so long, a desperate, never-ending cacophony whose presence he noted only when Qui-Gon kissed him and it was gone.

What he knew, then, at last, was the touch of his master’s tongue, its taste, the sounds his master made when it slid over his own.

What he knew was the heat of his master’s hands on his hips, spread over his back, rising to ruffle his hair.

What he knew was the high whine of the Force--the shouting within him, the terrible certainty-- settling around him like smoke, thick and soothing, tied to the touch of their hands.

He was 19 again and he had failed at nothing because his master wanted him, at last. 

“Oh, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon said, pressing their foreheads together. “My beautiful, bright creature. How I’ve missed you.”

Obi-Wan cupped his master’s face--so treasured once, and again. “And I you.”

“Now that I have you, I can’t let you go.” Qui-Gon nipped at Obi-Wan’s lips. “Do you understand that? From me, from my ship, from my arms, there can be no escape. Unless that is what you wish right now, in this moment; say it now and I’ll release you before this moment is gone.”

“Not even as a high-value hostage?” He took another kiss. “Surely, your masters would appreciate extra funds for their cause.”

Qui-Gon sneered. “Fuck them. I go my own way. My loyalty is to the darkness and to myself. I assist the Sith when it’s to my benefit, and vice versa.”

“Still a renegade, then?” Obi-Wan wound his arms around his master’s neck.“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“See? The important things never change.” Qui-Gon turned his head and found Obi-Wan’s mouth. “In me, dear one, and in you.”

Later, when robes of black and white lay abandoned and they fell together, flesh against flesh, they coupled in the shade of memories Obi-Wan had done his best to abandon and that Qui-Gon had held onto greedily, wearing the edges of those days down to a shine.

 _How beautiful you were then_ , he breathed into the first fragile strands of their bond. _How beautiful and smart and strong and oh, how I wanted you_.

“I wish you’d taken me,” Obi-Wan sighed as Qui-Gon pressed inside. “Tugged me into your lap one night and had me there and then.”

“In our quarters in the Temple?”

“Mmmm.”

Qui-Gon gritted his teeth, silver hair falling past his shoulders, and between them, Obi-Wan saw again so clearly their rooms as they had been. _I thought about that. Many, many times. There were some days I wanted to touch you so badly I thought I would die._

Obi-Wan arched his back and moaned, low and hurt. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because,” Qui-Gon managed as their hips came up flush, “I knew I wasn’t any good for you. I could hear the darkness calling already, and I was greedy. I wanted you to be only mine.”

There was no need to speak after that. There was only the frantic pitch of Qui-Gon’s hips and the brush of their lips and the way Obi-Wan found he could not look away and when he came, he saw himself in Qui-Gon’s eyes as he had been that awful day on Naboo, lying helpless between a Sith’s blade and the word in Qui-Gon’s mouth, a command: _Stop_.

 _You were so afraid,_ Qui-Gon whispered in their bond. _You were so afraid not of dying, but of me, your master. I’d betrayed you, you loved me: it was all there in your face, Obi-Wan. It tore at something inside me. Leaving you there was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It was selfish of me, hmm? It gave me pleasure knowing you were alive._

In time, Obi-Wan would tell his master of the Council’s folly; of the casual way they had dumped guilt upon him without understanding of how it might eat at him from inside. In time, Obi-Wan would show his master the light again and gaze deeper into Qui-Gon’s darkness and together, they would find a balance of their own making, their own kind. But for now he would live in the moment and revel in his master’s love, whatever color cloak it wore. For now, in the moment, he’d come.

“You won’t leave me,” Qui-Gon panted, triumphant, as Obi-Wan’s cries still hung in the air. “Whatever lies ahead, you won’t leave me, dear one, will you?”

He wound his fingers through his master’s hair. “Never,” he sighed as Qui-Gon dropped his head against Obi-Wan’s shoulder and howled. “Whatever lies ahead, master. You’re mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is one I vaguely feel like I should apologize for...


End file.
